KASSEBAUMRECEIVESHIGHMARKS

U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum is one of the most popular senators in the country, as judged by her constituents.

In terms of job performance, you can't get much higher marks than U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum.

The retiring Republican senator is in third place in constituent popularity among the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, according to a new Journal-World poll.

"She might go down as the most popular Kansan in history," said Del Ali, vice president of Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research, which conducted the survey for the J-W and other media outlets.

The survey showed that of the sample of likely Kansas voters polled in September, 29 percent rated Kassebaum's job performance as "excellent," 52 percent as "good," 12 percent as "fair," 4 percent as "poor" and 3 percent were undecided.

The poll combined her "excellent" and "good" ratings to get an overall positive rating of 81 percent.

That was second only to U.S. Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, who had 82 percent, and was tied with U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. Byrd was rated higher because he had a higher "excellent" rating.

In contrast, about a fifth of the voters don't seem to know much about U.S. Sen. Sheila Frahm, R-Kan., who is serving until January in Bob Dole's former seat.

Frahm, the former lieutenant governor who was appointed in June by Gov. Bill Graves, lost the GOP August primary to U.S. Rep. Sam Brownback.

The J-W poll showed Frahm ranked 99th in constituent popularity among the 100 senators, with an overall score of 33 percent. That was just above last place U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., who had a 30 percent rating.